Keyword spam has become the latest dirty App Store trick.

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Nothing says "lame attempt to get noticed" more than including the names of popular products in your App Store description to raise your search profile. When users search for those names, up pops your application like a poor, unloved relative who shows up at family reunions, gets drunk, and tries to go home with the family silver.

At Tapbots, Paul Haddad noticed that unrelated applications were popping up in App Store whenever he searched for Rolando. Haddad was too good-natured to offer a link to the offending applications. But for the sake of our readers, Arsis not. iPhone developer collect3 is clearly trying build success on the back of the competition. They've included these "collect3 are currently playing:" lines in several of their applications. These descriptions do nothing to talk about the actual product and everything to game the App Store's search results.

Obviously, App Store is a growing eco-system. And every eco-system is going to involve a fight for survival of the fittest. But you can do that in a reasonable way or you can do it in an ugly way. We've already seen the "offer free for a limited time" gambit deployed widely and successfully. That kind of release strategy doesn't depend on deception or spamming, and it has produced positive results for developers. We've also seen the ugly side. We've seen developers modifying their release dates to stay on top of the "new releases" list, for example, and this latest keyword spam falls into the latter category. It's unworthy and reeks of bad karma.

Google spends a lot of time trying to develop algorithms to discount page rank spammers. Clearly, App Store is going to have to invest in that same kind of approach. With thousands of titles all competing for the attention and pocketbook of iPhone users, these positioning games are going to get dirtier and more sophisticated over time.

Ars has contacted collect3 by email looking for a statement on this matter but have yet to hear back from them.